1. Field of Invention
The present invention relates to telecommunications and, more particularly, to a voice mail system of a telecommunications network that provides a scan mode that plays snippets of voice mail messages rather than the entire messages.
2. Description of Related Art
Current voice mail systems play back the entire voice mail message to the user and then provide the user with several options to allow the user to set the disposition of the message, such as, for example, save the message, delete the message, move the message to a mailbox folder, etc. The user is also able to set the status of the message once the entire message has been played back to the user. For example, once the message has been played back, the user can set the status of the message as new, saved, previously played, etc.
One major disadvantage of current voice mail systems is that they are very menu driven and require a lot of user interaction. In current voice mail systems, when the user accesses the user's voice mailbox, each message is played in its entirety to the user unless the user takes some action while a message is being played, such as save, delete, move to a folder, etc. At the end of each message, the user hears a system audio prompt that informs the user of which keys to press on the telephone keypad in order to cause various actions to occur. For example, the prompt may state something to the effect of “Press one to save the message”, “Press 2 to delete the message”, “Press 3 to replay the message”, “press 9 to change user options”, etc. When the user selects one of the available options, the system will cause the corresponding action to occur. If the user does not select one of the available options, the audio prompts will be replayed until the user selects one of the options or hangs up the telephone.
The level of user interaction required by such menu driven systems is often inconvenient to the user and, in certain situations, dangerous. For example, often times cellular telephone users check their voice mail while driving. To interact with the system, the user typically looks at the telephone and tries to depress a certain key or combinations of keys on the telephone keypad that correspond to a particular option. Not only is it difficult for the user to make the appropriate selection while driving, the user is distracted from driving, which can lead to accidents. In addition, because it is often difficult to make the desired selection while driving, the user may make the wrong selection, which can lead to other problems, such as a message being inadvertently deleted.
Attempts have been made to improve voice mail systems by reducing the level of user interaction required. For example, Valco et al., U.S. Pat. No. 6,442,243, discloses a voice mail system that attempts to streamline the interaction between the user and the menu driven voice mail system. In this system, if the user does not select a menu option within a certain amount of time after a message is played back, the system automatically retrieves the next message in the queue and plays it back to the user. In order to reduce the amount of user interaction required, the messages automatically begin playing when the user accesses the user's mailbox without the need for the user to enter a password. Also, messages remain classified as new or saved after they have been played unless the user explicitly saves it or erases it. Valco et al. states that because of these features, the voice mail system requires less user interaction than other voice mail systems and thus facilitates “hands-free” operation.
Although the system disclosed in Valco et al. requires less user interaction than other prior art voice mail systems system, the Valco et al. system still requires user interaction to skip to the next message in the queue if the user doesn't want to listen to the entire message. Either the entire message is played without requiring any interaction on the part of the user, or the user must interact to skip to the next message, to save the current message or to delete the current message. Accordingly, a need yet exists for a voice mail system that further decreases the amount of user interaction required, and that also provides the user with all of the many useful options and features of known voice mail systems.